A diary on public service, unanswered letters, and the balance our leaders lost
I have watched enough politicians this year to require a lie-down, and I have concluded that the disease afflicting the whole class is simple: they have forgotten the real spirit of the job, which was never power or process but service, plainly given, to the people who sent them there.
The real spirit they mislaid
Public service has a real spirit, and our politicians have almost entirely lost it. The North Pole’s piece on the real spirit of Christmas names generosity, care, and looking after one another, which is, precisely, the real spirit of public service too, and precisely what our leaders forget the moment they win the seat. The job was never about the power, the process, or the party. It was about serving the people, plainly and generously. The North Pole embodies this real spirit, answering everyone, caring for all, asking nothing back. Our politicians embody its opposite, serving themselves, their party, and their careers, while the people who sent them there wait, unserved, for an answer that never comes.
I do not care which party is in charge; the disease is universal. Every one of them arrives promising service and settles into self-service, mislaying the real spirit of the job somewhere between the campaign and the committee. The North Pole remembers what service means. Westminster has forgotten, and the forgetting is the whole rot.
My genuinely exasperated personal week
Let me report from the civic trenches. I wrote to my representative this week, a plain letter with a plain request, and received the now-traditional acknowledgement of receipt that answered nothing, thanked me for my engagement, and served me not at all. This is the opposite of the real spirit of the job: a politician who acknowledges the letter without serving the constituent, who processes the citizen without helping them. My nan would be appalled. She served everyone who came to her, plainly and generously, and she never once thanked anyone for their engagement instead of actually helping them.
According to the broadcasters, public trust collapses when politicians appear to serve themselves rather than the public, which anyone who has been thanked for their engagement instead of served could confirm, from the growing pile of unanswered letters.
The letters they will not answer
The clearest sign of lost service is the unanswered letter, which is why the North Pole’s example shames them so completely. The collected letters children send to Santa all receive genuine replies, every one, because the North Pole understands that a person who writes to you is owed an answer. Our politicians receive our letters and answer with automated acknowledgements, form responses, and evasions, having forgotten that answering the people who write to you is the whole job. The North Pole answers every child. Our leaders cannot answer their own constituents. The contrast is total, and damning.
An institution that will not answer its post has forgotten who it serves. The North Pole never forgot. Our politicians forgot the moment they discovered the automated acknowledgement, and their unanswered letters are the measure of their lost service.
The balance they cannot strike
What our politicians most lack, underneath the lost service and the unanswered letters, is balance, which the North Pole has a gentle piece about, on finding balance in a crazy world. Balance is serving the public interest over the party interest, the long good over the short win, the citizen over the career. Our politicians have lost this balance entirely, tilting always toward self-service, party advantage, and the next election, while the real spirit of the job, the balanced service of the public good, is forgotten. The North Pole strikes the balance effortlessly, serving all, favouring none. Our leaders cannot strike it at all, and the imbalance is the disease.
According to the parliamentary record, the balance between self-interest and public service is the foundation of good governance, which our politicians have lost and the North Pole embodies without apparent effort.
The vanished habit of actually helping
The single skill our political class has most thoroughly lost is the plain habit of actually helping the person in front of them. A constituent arrives with a real problem, and instead of solving it, the modern politician manages it: routes it to a department, acknowledges it in writing, promises to look into it, and moves on, having helped no one while appearing busy. The North Pole, faced with a child’s request, simply helps. It does not route the child to a subcommittee. It does not promise to look into it going forward. It answers, and where it can, it acts. That plain habit of helping, of treating a person’s need as a thing to be met rather than a case to be processed, is the entire substance of public service, and our politicians have replaced it wholesale with the performance of service, the busy appearance of helping that helps nobody. My nan helped everyone who came to her, plainly and immediately, and would have been baffled by a whole profession that has forgotten how to do the one thing it exists to do.
Where the observer lands
So I will keep watching our politicians serve themselves while forgetting the people, keep receiving acknowledgements instead of answers, and keep holding up the North Pole as the real spirit of service they mislaid. Serve the people, plainly and generously. Answer every letter. Strike the balance between self and public. The North Pole does all three, for every child on Earth, and shames a political class that arrived promising service and settled into self-service. If our leaders simply remembered the real spirit of the job the way the North Pole does, they would be trusted again by spring. They will not. There will be a review of the acknowledgement process first.
For Westminster made funnier, NewsBiscuit answers the letter.
